Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre: From In-House Mailing to a Fully Managed Solution

Background

The Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre has been at the heart of its local community for more than 75 years. Founded in 1948 by 14 theatre enthusiasts, the organisation has grown into a thriving community theatre supported by generations of dedicated volunteers.

Like many community organisations, the theatre relies heavily on its volunteers, both on and off stage. This means finding ways to reduce time-consuming administrative tasks is particularly important, allowing volunteers to focus their time and energy on running the theatre and engaging with its patrons.

One area where this became increasingly important was the theatre’s regular postal marketing.

The Challenge: A Time-Consuming Mailing Process

In 2020, the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre was using a franking machine to send regular marketing communications to its patrons.

With typical mailings of around 150 items at a time and more than 850 items being sent each year, preparing the theatre’s postal campaigns required considerable volunteer time.

The process was almost entirely manual. Marketing materials were printed by a third-party supplier before being delivered back to the theatre, where volunteers would:

• organise the printed materials;
• manually insert them into envelopes;
• prepare and frank each item;
• pack and handle boxes of completed mail;
• and arrange for the post to be dispatched from the theatre.

Because everything had to be managed from the theatre itself, the process presented a significant logistical challenge. Large mailings often had to be divided into smaller, more manageable batches simply so volunteers could physically handle them.

Alongside the time involved, the theatre was paying for its franking machine and associated running costs. By 2025, a Royal Mail Second Class franked item was costing approximately 84p in postage alone, before taking into account the cost of hiring the franking machine, printing the marketing materials and the volunteer time required to prepare each mailing.

The theatre began looking for a simpler and more efficient way to manage its postal marketing.

The First Step: Moving Postage to My Mailing Room

The Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre initially moved the postage element of its campaigns to My Mailing Room.

Rather than paying approximately 84p per item for Second Class franking, the theatre was able to reduce its postage cost to around 50p per item.

For 850 items, that represents a postage saving of approximately £289 a year based on those rates alone – before considering the additional saving from no longer needing the franking machine for these mailings.

At this stage, however, the theatre was still arranging its own printing and volunteers continued to stuff and prepare the envelopes before handing the completed mailing over for postage.

It provided an opportunity for the theatre to experience the service and build confidence in outsourcing part of a process that had previously been handled internally.

The Solution: Print, Fulfilment and Postage in One Service

After several months of working with My Mailing Room, the theatre decided to take the next step and hand over the entire mailing process.

Instead of coordinating a printer, receiving boxes of materials, manually filling envelopes and then arranging postage, the theatre could provide its mailing requirements and have the process managed from print through to dispatch.

My Mailing Room now takes care of:

• printing the marketing materials;
• preparing and enclosing each mailing;
• sorting and preparing the completed items;
• and dispatching the entire campaign.

The fully managed service costs approximately 88p per item, comparable with the 84p postage-only franking cost the theatre had previously been paying.

The key difference is that the 88p covers far more than simply applying postage.

The Result: More Than a Postage Saving

Moving away from the original franking process has transformed the way the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre manages its postal marketing.

For approximately the same per-item cost as its previous postage alone, the theatre can now have its materials printed, enclosed, prepared and dispatched as part of one managed service.

The change has also removed many of the less obvious costs associated with handling mail internally. There is no longer the same requirement for volunteers to spend hours stuffing envelopes, handling heavy boxes or breaking campaigns into smaller batches.

Instead, an entire mailing can be produced and dispatched in one streamlined operation.

The Bigger Picture

For the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre, outsourcing its mailing process wasn’t simply about finding cheaper postage.

It was about finding a more practical way to communicate with patrons while making better use of the organisation’s most valuable resource, its volunteers’ time.

What began as a move from franking to a more cost-effective postage service gradually developed into a fully managed print and mailing solution.

The result is a simpler process, fewer logistical headaches and a mailing operation that can be completed in one go, leaving the theatre’s volunteers with more time to concentrate on what they do best: keeping the theatre running and bringing productions to their community.

Could Your Mailing Process Be Simpler?

If your organisation is still printing, stuffing, sorting and franking its own marketing mail, the true cost may be more than the price of postage.

My Mailing Room can manage everything from print and fulfilment through to final dispatch, helping organisations reduce administration, simplify regular mailings and make better use of their team’s time.

Talk to My Mailing Room about how we could streamline your next mailing campaign.